Plants & CreaturesGreek → English
Nautilus
/ˈnɔːtɪləs/noun
A marine mollusc with a chambered spiral shell, and the paper nautilus, a related octopus with a thin shell.
The Greek roots
ναυτίλος
nautílos
sailor, paper nautilus
ναῦς
naûs
ship
Literally: “sailor”
The story of the word
Aristotle described the paper nautilus rising to the surface and spreading a membrane like a sail, which is why the Greeks named it the sailor. The observation was wrong in its detail: the two expanded arms secrete and grip the shell rather than catch the wind. Jules Verne gave the name to Captain Nemo's submarine in 1870, and the US Navy handed it to the first nuclear-powered submarine in 1954.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → English
- First recorded
- 17th century
Same family
nauticalastronautnauseanavy
In a sentence
A cut nautilus shell shows the chambers spiralling in a near-perfect logarithmic curve.